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“Bevacizumab is a targeted therapy that we’ve used in several different cancer types, because it’s pretty effective. It works basically by trying to reduce the recruitment of blood vessels that the cancer is making. So cancer likes to bring blood vessels to its tumor so that it can help grow and get those nutrients it needs. And also it helps it spread. Well, bevacizumab and its derivatives try to block that process. What we call angiogenesis. The problem is there’s a couple of very serious side effects that you want to be aware of. For one, it can cause your blood pressure to get high. So you need to be aware of what your blood pressure is, and either have that with your primary doctor or your oncologist. It does increase your chance of stroke, especially a bleeding stroke. It does have the risk of possibly bleeding from a tumor if it’s somewhere in your stomach.
And it can also just cause increased bleeding in general and needs up to four to six weeks of being stopped before a surgery, as well as generally four to six weeks before restarting it. Outside of these precautions that it’s important for you to be aware of, it is pretty effective across tumor types, which is why it’s been around for a while. It also is the reason that your oncologist may be ordering urine studies because they want to make sure that you’re not spilling too much protein into your urine as it’s been known to do that as well.”
